The Water Cure
The accused woman lay naked on an escalera, a ladder tipped so that her head was lower than her feet. The torturer had stretched her out to her full length and bound her tightly. Iron prongs held her jaws open. Her nostrils were stopped, allowing breathing only through her mouth. She struggled, but her bounds permitted little movement, and days of relentless questioning had left her exhausted. The torturer draped a piece of linen loosely over her open mouth. Jugs of water lined a nearby wall. Three other men stood over the woman in the torture chamber. A doctor observed her reactions and assessed her general condition. The mandates of the 15th Century Spanish Inquisition required the presence of a physician to monitor the health of the accused. The purpose of torture would be nullified if the accused was physically unable to hear and understand the proceedings. A confession, if it came, had to be a pure act, not the half-conscious ramblings of a mortally wounded sinner. A clerk sat at a crude wooden table, poised to write down the particulars of the session. The man in charge of the proceedings, the inquisitor, ignored the woman’s panicked squeals and read through the charges levied against her. Witnesses had previously testified that on several successive Saturdays, smoke did not emerge from the woman’s chimney, a strong indication that she was secretly a practicing Jew. Judaism forbids manual labor on the Sabbath, and starting a fire was considered manual labor. During questioning the woman had insisted that although she was born a Jew, she was now a converse, a convert to Catholicism. But the telltale signs, which were outlined by the Grand Inquisitor himself, Tomas de Torquemada, indicated that she was in fact a heretic, a practicing Jew pretending to be a Catholic and secretly subverting the Catholic faith. When the inquisitor finished reviewing the charges, he looked to the doctor who gave him a nod of assent. The inquisitor then pointed to the jugs of water and told the torturer to be ready. The torturer lifted one of the sloshing jugs; each contained one liter of water. The woman’s eyes widened in panic. She knew what was coming, and she tried to scream. The first level of torture employed by the Spanish Inquisition was the “water cure.” Water was poured into the accused’s open mouth. The linen cloth was washed into the opening of the throat, preventing the accused from spitting the water back out. The overwhelming sensation of drowning forced the accused to swallow the water. The rules of torture as written by Torquemada, a man whom historians have compared to Hitler, stipulated that no more than eight liters of water could be used in a single session.
The torturer held the earthen jug in his arms, ready to follow the inquisitor’s orders. The woman cried and struggled for breath, anticipating the worst. The inquisitor stepped forward and spoke. “We shall begin.”
Born in 1420 in Valladolid, Tomas de Torquemada entered the Dominican monastery in his home town at a young age. He became an unyielding ascetic who habitually wore a shirt of rough cloth under his robes to humble himself, yet he eventually amassed a fortune so great he was able to commission the magnificent monastery of St. Thomas in Avila. He was a strict advocate of Church orthodoxy, and yet toward the end of his life he kept a “unicorn’s horn,” a talisman he believed protected him from harm.
Torquemada’s uncle, Cardinal Juan de Torquemada, was a well-known theologian, and Torquemada’s superiors took notice of him for this reason. He rose to the position of prior at the Monastery of Santa Cruz in Segovia and held that office for 24 years. Throughout his life, Torquemada was offered higher Church titles, but he preferred to remain a humble friar laboring in the fields of the Lord. But thanks to his special relationship with the sovereigns of the Spanish kingdoms, Torquemada, at age 63, was appointed to the position of Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition, an office he relished. Torquemada’s mission was to rid Spain of all heresy, and his vigorous efforts earned him the name, “the hammer of heretics.”
Torquemada’s principal supporter was Queen Isabella I of Castile. He had been her confessor since she was a child and remained her closest advisor and confidante throughout her life. He advised her to marry King Ferdinand of Aragon in 1469 in order to consolidate their kingdoms and form a power base that he could draw upon for his own purposes. With Torquemada whispering in their ears, the royal couple lobbied Pope Sixtus IV to grant their request for a Holy Office to administer an inquisition in their kingdoms. The Church had established inquisitions in other regions of Europe in the past–notably in France and Italy–with the Vatican maintaining the ultimate authority over the prosecution of heretics. Ferdinand and Isabella, however, demanded that they as Catholic monarchs would hold civil authority over the Spanish Inquisition. The pope bowed to their pressure and issued a papal bull on Nov. 1, 1478, granting the monarchs’ request with the proviso that heretics would be able to appeal their cases to the Vatican where, as Simon Whitechapel states in his book, Flesh Inferno: Atrocities of Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition, the accused would have to send representatives, hire lawyers, and pay for a pardon. Sixtus IV obviously did not foresee the terrible results that an inquisition without papal control would bring.
The pope appointed five new inquisitors for the Spanish kingdoms on Feb. 11, 1482, and Torquemada was one of them. By the next year, he was named to Grand Inquisitor. Working within the mandates of the inquisition, Torquemada was now free to pursue his goals.
While Torquemada’s religious fervor can hardly be questioned, Whitechapel raises the possibility that the king, queen, and pope had other motives for wanting an inquisition–financial interests. Sixtus IV needed funds to “subdue rebels in the Papal states and fight a war against Muslims in the east.” Ferdinand and Isabella wanted to mount their own war against Muslims residing in Grenada, and they, too, needed money to finance it. According to the rules of the inquisition, local inquisitors could seize the property of any person accused of heresy, and that property would ultimately fall into the hands of the monarchy. An accused person always had the option of buying an expensive pardon from the Vatican. Both the pope and monarchs stood to profit from the Spanish Inquisition, especially because the heretics targeted by Torquemada were reputed to be a prosperous lot–conversos, Jews who had converted to Catholicism.
The focus of Torquemada’s obsessive quest to root out heresy in Spain was the marranos, Jews who outwardly converted to Catholicism (conversos) but secretly continued to observe their original faith. Torquemada and his followers felt that the marranos were undermining the teachings of Jesus Christ and endangering the Roman Catholic Church. Under the tyranny of the Spanish Inquisition, all conversos were suspect, and Catholics were urged to spy on their neighbors and inform on suspected marranos. Torquemada’s office published a set of guidelines to help Catholics identify practicing Jews in their midst: “If you see that your neighbors are wearing clean and fancy clothes on Saturdays, they are Jews. “If they clean their houses on Fridays and light candles earlier than usual on that night, they are Jews. “If they eat unleavened bread and begin their meals with celery and lettuce during Holy Week, they are Jews. “If they say prayers facing a wall, bowing back and forth, they are Jews.”
Ironically, the man charged with ridding the Spanish kingdoms of all Jewish influences was, according to author Beth Randall, the grandson of a converso. Torquemada’s grandmother was a Jew. King Ferdinand also had Jewish ancestors, a fact he did not easily acknowledge. He was said to have struck the queen when she once brought up his mixed blood. The notion of sangre limpia, or pure blood, consumed the Spanish nobility. A person with untainted lineage was believed to be closer to God and naturally stood a better chance of entering the Kingdom of Heaven after death. But many Spaniards, including those in high places, had Jewish ancestors. Jewish communities had thrived in Spain for centuries. More Jews lived in Spain than in any other area of Europe, and it was not that unusual for Jews to marry Christians. A large population of Muslims also lived in the Spanish kingdoms at this time, but they were a secondary concern of the Spanish Inquisition under Torquemada. These Muslims, or mudejars as they were known, “lived on the margins of Christian society rather than intermingling with it, as the Jews did,” according to historian Joseph Perez in The Spanish Inquisition: A History. “They posed a problem that was more social than religious.” A full-scale persecution of the mudejars did not happen until the 16th Century, after the death of Torquemada. The Jewish and converso populations were an integral part of the Spanish economy in the 15th Century. Many Jewish merchants became rich operating on Spanish soil, and Jews profited from usury (lending money for a fee), a practice that was forbidden to Catholics. The Spanish Jews who had not converted to Catholicism were a thorn in Torquemada’s side that he could not extricate because his mandate from the Vatican did not permit him to persecute individuals who openly practiced their own faith. He could target only the secret Jews. Still, he tried to handle the Jews beyond his ecclesiastical reach with a political solution, urging Ferdinand and Isabella to issue an edict commanding all Jews to either convert or leave Spain. The Jews countered his efforts by offering to pay the sovereigns 30,000 ducats to leave them alone. Ferdinand was tempted to take their offer, which infuriated Torquemada. The Grand Inquisitor went to the royal court, carrying a crucifix. “Judas Iscariot sold Christ for 30 pieces of silver,” he cried. “Your Highness is about to sell him for 30,000 ducats. Here he is. Take him and sell him.” Torquemada slammed the crucifix down on a table and stormed out of the room. Ferdinand decided not take the offer, and in 1492, the year Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain, to find a new route to the East, Torquemada convinced the sovereigns to issue an order expelling all Jews from the country. Several members of Columbus’s crew were Jews fleeing to beat the deadline set by the government. Conversos who secretly practiced Judaism were called marranos. A person accused of being a marrano immediately forfeited his property to the court. He was also required to walk through the streets wearing a sambenito, a yellow shirt covered with images of the cross that only came to the waist, leaving the rest of the body exposed. A public flogging followed this humiliation. At certain periods during the Spanish Inquisition, accused marranos were required to wear red patches on their outer garments to identify themselves. They were forced to live in walled neighborhoods called aljamas (ghettos), and their doctors were forbidden from practicing medicine. And this was the punishment for simply being a suspect.
Torquemada was a methodical man who, according to scholars such as William Thomas Walsh in his book Characters of the Inquisition, wanted to improve upon the procedures of previous inquisitions and “mitigate” the use of torture. Suspected heretics were not rounded up and immediately imprisoned and tortured to get them to confess to their sins. The process that brought accused heretics to trial was long and involved.
The first step was the public reading of an edict of grace during High Mass at the suspected heretic’s local parish. The edict gave heretics a period of 40 days to come forward and confess their sins. Under Torquemada’s orders, a second and third edict was issued, giving sinners additional time to make their peace with God. Those who confessed were absolved of their sins. However, secret hearings were held during the grace period where citizens were given the opportunity to inform on their neighbors. If a suspected heretic was denounced by two people of good character, the suspect was summoned to the court. If five witnesses testified against him or the court deemed his statements heretical, he was imprisoned. In the absence of such proofs, a bishop could intervene and simply order a suspect’s imprisonment on his own judgment. The accused was granted a hearing within three days of his arrest. Judges read the charges aloud, and the accused was given the opportunity to confess and “be reconciled.” If the accused did not confess, another hearing took place 10 days later. If the accused continued to deny his or her guilt, a third hearing was granted. If the desired result was not achieved at this point, an interrogatorio (interrogation) was ordered. Torquemada’s guidelines demanded that the inquisitors conducting the interrogatorio remain “cautious, circumspect, and charitable” in their search for the truth. They were to investigate the background of the accused thoroughly and take into account extenuating circumstances, such as the person having been misled by a priest, teacher, or parent. During these proceedings, two members of the clergy unconnected to the court were always present to monitor the questioning. When the interrogatorio was completed, the inquisitors decided if a trial was in order. If so, the inquisitors read a long list of formal accusations to the accused, whom they referred to as reo, or criminal. The accused could hire counsel, and if he or she couldn’t afford counsel, the court would appoint one and bear the cost. Trials were typically long and tedious. The names of witnesses were not revealed to the reos, but they could name all their enemies in the hope of discrediting at least some of those testifying against them. At the trial the accused was not assumed innocent until proven guilty. Torquemada felt that if sufficient evidence had already been presented proving the guilt of the accused, torture could be employed as a legitimate tool for getting to the truth. The water cure, as previously described, was usually the first level of torture. If this did not coax a confession, the rack might be used next. The accused would be laid face up on a table and bound with ropes at the wrists and ankles, which would be pulled in increments to produce terrible pain.
If the rack proved to be ineffective, the accused was then tied with ropes by the wrists and led up to a scaffold. The inquisitor would then demand that the accused confess. If the response was not satisfactory, the inquisitor instructed the torturer to shove the accused off the scaffold. The ropes stopped the accused abruptly before his or her feet touched the ground, wrenching the person’s joints and producing excruciating pain. This was repeated as deemed necessary under the watchful eye of a physician who checked the accused after each drop to make sure the person did not perish. According to the rules set down by Torquemada, torture was never to result in death. If after several rounds of torture, the accused still did not confess, the judges inevitably declared the person guilty of heresy. The penalty was death, and the execution took place at a special public event.
An auto da fe, or act of faith, was a public ceremony in which the declared heretic’s sins were proclaimed and his sentence was passed. The purpose of the event was not to further humiliate the accused. Rather, it was to educate the public and strike fear into their hearts, seeing the result of a life of heresy. For this reason, autos da fe were held on Sundays and holidays when the largest crowds could attend. The sentence for heresy–burning at the stake–was not formally a part of the ceremony, but it was usually held nearby and conducted by civil, rather than church, authorities. Once condemned by the Inquisition, the heretic was “relaxed” to the jurisdiction of the monarchy who would have already prepared “the scaffold, the wood, the garroting machine, and the civil executioners,” according to historian Joseph Perez.
Even death did not save the accused from execution. If the Inquisition found a deceased person guilty, his or her remains were exhumed and burned. If the accused had fled to escape torture, he or she was burned in effigy. No one escaped the verdict of the Inquisition. Last-minute confessions sometimes earned a reprieve, but Torquemada and his inquisitors generally distrusted them, suspecting that such confessions were not sincere and were only last-ditch attempts to avoid death. For this reason the condemned were often gagged to keep them from confessing, even though inquisitors continued to demand full confessions for the benefit of the crowd. In most cases, even if a condemned person managed to confess during an auto da fe, the execution was still carried out. A confession could, however, earn a degree of mercy from the authorities. According to Beth Randall, if condemned heretics “recanted and kissed the cross, they were mercifully garroted before the fire was set. If they recanted only, they were burned with quick-burning seasoned wood.” If they refused to recant entirely, “they were burned with slow-burning green wood.” Those condemned to death were forced to wear a special black sambenito “bearing a design of flames or sometimes demons, dragons and snakes, signifying the Hell that awaited them,” according to Perez.
Scholars disagree over the number of people executed by the Spanish Inquisition during Torquemada’s reign as Grand Inquisitor (1483-1498). Some believe he was responsible for the deaths of 2,000 Jews. Pulgar, Queen Isabella’s secretary, wrote that 2,000 executions took place during her reign which extended beyond the date of Torquemada’s death. Author William Thomas Walsh gives Torquemada credit for “perhaps half or more” of that figure, “between 1,000 and 1,500.” But there is no minimizing the savagery of Torquemada’s administration or the fact that it was motivated by anti-Semitism under the guise of protecting the “one true faith,” Roman Catholicism.
Apologists for Torquemada stop short of ranking him with the 20th Century madmen who used genocide to achieve their aberrant goals. Some scholars argue that Torquemada, unlike Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot, was motivated by genuine religious fervor and that he was a humble servant of the Lord who did not seek power for itself. Some also feel that his views and actions are consistent with the pre-Enlightenment age and so he must be judged differently.
But Torquemada’s persecution of the Jews in Spain bears a remarkable similarity to Hitler’s persecution of the Jews in Europe before and during World War II. Just as Hitler promulgated the Aryan race as superior, Torquemada believed in the superiority of individuals with “pure blood.” Both Torquemada and Hitler ordered all Jews to wear identifying markers on their outer clothing. Historian John Edward Longhurst states that Torquemada sponsored “book-burning festivals” in which “Hebrew Bibles” as well as “Arabic books” were destroyed to stem the spread of what he considered heresy. Tales of evil Jews who killed innocent Christian children spread during both the Spanish Inquisition and the Third Reich, although there was no evidence that these kinds of murders ever happened. Profiteering through usury has been cited through the ages as a major crime committed by Jews, even though the practice of making loans and charging interests has benefited economies, including predominantly Christian economies.
In Torquemada’s case, money may have indeed been the root of all evil because it seems clear that the Grand Inquisitor, the Spanish sovereigns, and the Pope were all eager to get their hands on Jewish assets in whatever way they could. Torquemada, along with Ferdinand and Isabella, reconciled the blatant seizure of Jewish property as necessary to finance their holy wars against all heathens. In their minds it was permissible to steal from heretics in order to fight heresy. In this sense, Torquemada’s agenda was as cold-blooded as any of the dictators who followed him. Simon Whitechapel writes that although Torquemada’s death count did not approach that of later mass murderers, “Qualitatively Torquemada stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Hitler and Stalin.”
Torquemada managed to amass a personal fortune during the Inquisition, which he used to expand the monastery of the Holy Cross in Seville and build the St. Thomas Aquinas monastery in Avila. At the height of his power he traveled with a detail of 250 armed familiars. Toward the end of his life, he grew paranoid and suspicious, constantly in fear of assassins. He was known to place a “unicorn’s horn” next to his plate when he dined to ward off the effects of possible poisons placed in his food. Like all other public figures who abuse power, Torquemada was apparently blind to the inconsistencies of his own life. Torquemada died of natural causes at the age of 78 in 1498, but the Spanish Inquisition continued for another 336 years until it was finally abolished in 1834. According to Beth Randall, the apparatus set in motion by Torquemada was ultimately responsible for the murders of 30,000 Jews.
Kerrigan, Michael. The Instruments of Torture. New York: The Lyons Press, 2001 Longhurst, John Edward. “Inquisitor General Torquemada.” The Age of Torquemada. www.ku.edu/carrie/texts/carrie_books/longhurst2/07.html. Perez, Joseph. The Spanish Inquisition: A History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Randall, Beth. “A Regrettable Life: Tomas de Torquemada.” www.mcs.drexel.edu/~gbrandal/Illum_html/Torquemada.html. (1996). Walsh, William Thomas. Characters of the Inquisition. Rockford, IL: Tan Books, 1940. Whitechapel, Simon. Flesh Inferno: Atrocities of Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition. New York: Creation Books, 2003.